ople left who cared about
something else.

The intervals of the distant artillery fire grew shorter, as if
the big guns were tuning up, choking to get something out. Claude
sat up in his bed and listened. The sound of the guns had from
the first been pleasant to him, had given him a feeling of
confidence and safety; tonight he knew why. What they said was,
that men could still die for an idea; and would burn all they had
made to keep their dreams. He knew the future of the world was
safe; the careful planners would never be able to put it into a
strait-jacket,--cunning and prudence would never have it to
themselves. Why, that little boy downstairs, with the candlelight
in his eyes, when it came to the last cry, as they said, could
"carry on" for ever! Ideals were not archaic things, beautiful
and impotent; they were the real sources of power among men. As
long as that was true, and now he knew it was true--he had come
all this way to find out--he had no quarrel with Destiny. Nor did
he envy David. He would give his own adventure for no man's. On
the edge of sleep it seemed to glimmer, like the clear column of
the fountain, like the new moon,--alluring, half-averted, the
bright face of danger.

XV

When Claude and David rejoined their Battalion on the 20th of
September, the end of the war looked as far away as ever. The
collapse of Bulgaria was unknown to the American army, and their
acquaintance with European affairs was so slight that this would
have meant very little to them had they heard of it. The German
army still held the north and east of France, and no one could
say how much vitality was left in that sprawling body.

The Battalion entrained at Arras. Lieutenant Colonel Scott had
orders to proceed to the railhead, and then advance on foot into
the Argonne.

The cars were crowded, and the railway journey was long and
fatiguing. They detrained at night, in the rain, at what the men
said seemed to be the jumping off place. There was no town, and
the railway station had been bombed the day before, by an air
fleet out to explode artillery ammunition. A mound of brick, and
holes full of water told where it had been. The Colonel sent
Claude out with a patrol to find some place for the men to sleep.
The patrol came upon a field of straw stacks, and at the end of it
found a black farmhouse.

Claude went up and hammered on the door. Silence. He kept
hammering and calling, "The Americans are here!" A shutter